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I’ve been in a cooking slump lately. I used to cook something from scratch almost every night when I was working in an office job, with J cooking something or us ordering something one or two nights a week. Lately, it’s been the opposite – I’ve been cooking something from scratch one or two nights a week, and most nights we order something or I cook something “easy” – like frozen ravioli with pre-made pesto.

I’m not sure how I used to have the energy to cook so much. I guess my office job was just less draining than my days now. I also think it helped that J was home earlier in the evening – right now, his commute is almost two hours each way, so he leaves at 6:30 in the morning and gets home at 6:30 at night, and that’s if the trains all run on time and he catches the express train between Baltimore and D.C.

But last night I came home and wanted to make a real dinner, and I also knew we had a bunch of bell peppers left over that needed to be used up (from meals I’d planned to make but then put aside in favor of something that required less effort.) So I did some Internet scouring for options, and came up with a fewrecipes thatlooked promising, but we didn’t have exactly the right ingredients for any of them. So I improvised a bit, and this is what I came up with:

Stuffed peppers with black beans, rice, and corn

Ingredients

6-10 colored bell peppers, depending on size (I used 5 medium ones last night, and had about half of the filling left over)

1 c uncooked brown rice

2-3 T olive oil

4 large cloves garlic, diced

1 10-oz. can tomato sauce

1/2 T brown sugar

red pepper flakes

cumin

chili powder

1 can black beans

1.5 c frozen corn

grated cheddar cheese

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil. In the meantime, cut the tops off of the peppers, then carefully cut away the membranes inside the peppers and remove any seeds.

Parboil the peppers by placing them in the boiling water for 3 minutes. Remove them (use tongs!) and set them upright in a baking dish. It’s helpful if the baking dish is sized such that the peppers can help hold each other up.

Use the same boiling water to cook the brown rice – just dump it in, let it simmer for 40 minutes or so, then drain it like pasta.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet, then add the garlic and red pepper flakes (I used about 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes, but I was kind of winging it with my spices) and cook for 2-3 minutes, until garlic is fragrant and beginning to brown. Add tomato sauce, brown sugar, cumin (maybe 1 T?) and chili powder (2 T?), and stir to combine. Cook 1-2 minutes before adding the black beans and corn, then stir again until all is coated with the sauce. Finally, stir in the rice until sauce is distributed evenly. Remove from heat. (Maybe stir in some grated cheese? I didn’t do this, but will probably try it next time)

Fill peppers with stuffing. At this point, they can be set aside for a while until you’re ready to cook them (possibly even a day or two, if you covered and refrigerated them).

When you’re ready to cook the peppers, heat the oven to 350°. Top peppers with grated cheese, then cook 25-30 minutes, until cheese is thoroughly melted.

They turned out really well, and I can’t wait to eat the leftover beans and rice for lunch today. Enjoy!

I used to cook a lot, but I’ve been in kind of a cooking slump lately. I’m hoping to get back to cooking more this summer, when I’ll have more time. But I did just discover a new recipe combo that I made last night, and enjoyed for lunch again today: jerk tofu and coconut rice. One of the great things about this meal is that it’s easy to prep in advance – you can make the jerk sauce and let the tofu marinate earlier in the day, and after the chopping and the first 5 minutes of cooking, the coconut rice takes almost no active management. So it would be a good meal for a dinner party, which is hard to get with vegetarian meals since so many of them involve a lot of sautéing and active cooking immediately before serving them.